One Bride for Seven Brothers

 

Homily for the 3^rd Sunday before Advent: 

Eucharist – 6.xi.2022

(Job 19.23-27a; Luke 20.27-38)

The story we’ve just heard for our Gospel reading is a hard one - and intentionally so. That’s often the case with the parables of Jesus. But this time it’s the Sadducees, one of the religious parties in first century Palestine, trying to catch Jesus out. The Sadducees were distinguished from other Jewish groups such as the Pharisees by the fact that they didn’t believe in any form of life after death. We have only one life, they said. This is it. And so to make their point they try out Jesus with this question about a woman whose husband dies, leaving no children. She is observant of the Jewish Law, and so she goes on to marry his brother, but he dies… and so on until she has married all seven brothers of the family in turn. Not “Seven brides for seven brothers” - as the 1950s musical set in 19^th century backwoods Oregon put it - but one bride for seven brothers! The Sadducees are making fun of people who say they believe in a life beyond the grave. If she’s married all seven brothers, then whose wife is she going to be in the next life? They’re not interested in the answer. They just want to put Jesus on the spot.

What we need to say straightaway is that when we talk about the Christian approach to death and a life to come, it’s not just a matter of theory and religious argument. It might be for those Sadducees who come to Jesus with a test case in their desire to dispute his views on the resurrection – they want an opinion from him, and preferably one that will score them a point over the Pharisees. But the case of the woman whose husbands had all died one after another is more than merely an issue to debate. What about the grief that such a woman would feel - which anyone feels at the loss of a loved one? What about the care and sympathy that should be the human response? What about the expectations of a culture that says that she ought to go on marrying one brother after another until there are none left? Aren’t these the issues we need to deal with – and don’t they say something more profound about our faith in God and response to him?.. More profound than theorising over an other-worldly issue without any attention to what we know about this life?

The Sadducees in today’s Gospel take an approach which is called a reductio ad absurdam. They want the whole scenario to appear preposterous because they mock the idea that there can be any life beyond this one. And Jesus is not one for falling into their trap. Theirs is a false premise. Marriage is about what we do in this life. The resurrection from the dead, and the new life we may hope for, is something else.

What you can say about today’s Gospel passage is that you might at least feel the poignancy that the story has - something that goes beyond a theological fiction dreamt up by the Sadducees. At root there is the human issue: the young woman who loses a husband. That it happens in the story seven times is theological point-scoring. But the truth is to be found in the suffering and loss which she would know were it to happen just once. Beyond the arguing over theological issues about the Resurrection of the dead and first century Jewish marriage practices, the real issue is about taking seriously our humanity. And every life lost says something about our humanity and its diminishment. Christians need to be facing questions of life and death, not because we have answers, but because we have a God whose nature and purpose are revealed in the man, Jesus Christ. God is himself at the heart of our humanity, because he comes to us in Jesus.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was in Durham Cathedral. I don’t know if I’d noticed before the memorial stone to David Jenkins, former Bishop of Durham. But I certainly saw it last weekend and I pointed it out to the people I was with. The inscription engraved on it is a version of some of his most memorable words - at least memorable to me - and they’re words we can live by. David Jenkins used to say that the Gospel could be reduced to one sentence in which the only word of more than one syllable was “Jesus”: “God is as he is in Jesus, and so there is hope.”

Questions of life and death and the hope of what is to come are the subject of today’s Bible readings. Job can affirm, “I know that my Redeemer lives” and “in my flesh shall I see God.” Paul tells the Christians at Thessalonica that the calling of the Christian is first to get on with living life in this world before making rash assumptions about God’s plans for a world to come. And Jesus makes the point that hope in a new life with God is more than a matter of religious argument.

I found myself thinking about another priest with whom I worked at the time David Jenkins was our bishop. John Hammersley was never impressed by the theological arguments people might pick with each other, and still less by easy solutions. He was radical in his thinking, but most importantly he saw that our questioning needs to be taken into our prayer. Hope was the point for both John Hammersley and David Jenkins, and a real hope because God is involved with his creation. Life and death are more than a theory which needs a lot of argument or someone to pontificate. That’s the way the Sadducees act when they come to Jesus, theorising about the seven-times-widowed woman, but leaving precious little space for God or humanity. I’m afraid we can all too often miss the point of our faith. I remember John Hammersley declaring, “where there’s death there’s hope.” He meant that we need to die to all that holds us back from God – because that’s the only way we shall truly find the way to life.

John Hammersley died too young, but he published the fruits of his prayer in a series of writings he called “Psalms of Life.” This is one he called, “A Nunc Dimittis,” words which are in themselves a leave-taking:

I am no longer my own, but yours

    your goodness helps my faith grow stronger.

You give us all you have, and all you are

    all that we have and are, you take and bless.

So, God, I offer you my life

    I freely give all to you, for everything comes from you.